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MoMath Museum of Mathematics

Perhaps many of us used to nap during math classes because simply formulas and geometric shapes strung on board were boring. But to show just the opposite last week opened a Museum of Mathematics in Manhattan, New York.

Founders Museum of Mathematics (MoMath) are determined to give mathematics a new look, with interesting exhibits that express one side while the visitor explores the world of forms and numbers.

Mathematics is all over the museum. For example, the museum café looks like any other bar, but instead of coffee are served puzzles. A close look reveals that the walls are formed from the game Tetris-like styles and tables are also arranged how a horse would move on a chess board.

Exhibits MoMath take abstract concepts such as number theory and topology and let you interact with them. For example, a presentation consisting of a cart placed on a tray shaped rubber-like shapes of acorns from another world.

These forms are all “surfaces with constant width” – a form whose highest point is always at the same height above the sphere, regardless of how it is prepared. The most common examples are spheres, but there is an infinite variety of forms with this property. For this reason, the cart is moving on the surface as if they were on ball bearings.

MoMath team has high hopes for the impact as possible. In the United States, children begin to fall behind in this area. A member of the National Security Agency, which employs the largest number of mathematicians in the country, but employs only United States citizens said that, from his point of view, the greatest threat to national security is the lack of mathematicians born in the States together. But politicians and teachers rarely agree on how they would address the problem.